


Hardly the Hero

by dizzy



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-14
Updated: 2010-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-12 16:01:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about Sheppard is, Cam knows he's only passing through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hardly the Hero

**Author's Note:**

  * For [somehowunbroken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehowunbroken/gifts).



I.

"You sure about this?" Sheppard looks him right into the eye and asks in that lazy, careless voice.

Cam's gotten to know Sheppard a little bit in the past month, and he's come to realize that when Sheppard uses that voice it means that he cares, that he cares a hell of a lot, and that he's not nearly as relaxed about the situation as he comes off being. It's a good tactic; not one Cam could pull off, but effective. It's easy to underestimate Sheppard, even knowing that he's made it into his position of leadership for a reason.

"I'm sure," Cam says. He does a quick mental check; makes sure everything is in order. He's got his pack, got his weapon, got his voice and his sanity, and that's really all he'll need right now.

He gets that same sense of rattlers in his belly that he always gets when they step through the gate. It's amplified by the fact that he's not with his team; he's with this new group, with Sheppard – who has floated from mission to mission within the SGC since the replacement of Atlantis – and these other men he barely knows. He misses Carter's calming influence, Jackson's knowledge, Vala – well, shockingly, he misses just about everything about Vala. She was easy to be around. She didn't judge. Kind of like Sheppard. Yeah, he misses that.

But he wanted a change, and this is what he got.

 

II.

Sheppard's not bad company.

He's quiet, and that makes Cam talk a lot, but he figures if this man spent the last half decade putting up with Rodney McKay without going insane then he's either already started out that way, or he's got patience to last through the ages. Maybe a little bit of both, that seems par for the course.

He's surprised when Sheppard pulls a thick book out of his pack during their first night. Cam glances over, doesn't really try to hide the fact that he's curious.

Sheppard lifts the book up to show Cam the cover. Anna Karenina – another surprise. Cam just grins and shakes his head. Sheppard lifts an eyebrow in a silent 'what of it?' and Cam shrugs.

He digs through his own pack and pulls out a magazine, the latest issue of the sports magazine that shows up in his mailbox once a month. He lets them pile up when he's home, stores them up for those times when he's far, far away. Sheppard gives an approving nod.

 

III.

There's trouble. There's always trouble. There's zat fire and bullets flying, rolling ducking running taking cover, trying to keep their people alive.

They do make it through alive. They're still a day away from the gate, so there's another night of bunking down on the wilderness. They double up on watch duty, wary of a nighttime attack.

Even with two people on watch Cam still can't sleep, and he's not surprised to find that Sheppard can't either. There's no fire tonight, nothing to give off their location. It's just them and the scatter of forest covering and bitter cold. They talk shop like two military men until the conversation peters out. Sheppard has dirt on his chin still, and the graze of zat blast Cam got is still bleeding sporadically. He's bandaged and cleaned it, popped aspirin to dull the pain, shoved it back until it's just a background buzz in his mind. They're tired, jittery from adrenaline crash, dirty, bruised and battered. This is not what Cam will miss once he's out of the field, but its part of what makes the whole experience.

He doesn't say any of that but he instinctively knows that it's the same for Sheppard. He doesn't get that with everyone – most of them here just want bigger and better. They want to get on a team so they can make team leader, they want to make team leader so they can get a better posting, get a promotion, to hit that higher rank. The adrenaline junkies don't scale the ranks; they die or they're injured or elbowed out by politics. Sheppard got lucky, he got put on Atlantis. Cam got lucky; he got injured, and elbowed in by Jack O'Neill.

They're both exceptions to the rule.

Cam glances over at Sheppard. "So how's the book?"

Sheppard grins. "Long."

 

IV.

Back on Earth, he asks Sheppard out for a drink.

Well, not like that. He doesn't ask him out.

He just asks him if he wants a drink, and Sheppard does his little half shrug and Cam figures that means yes so once they've showered and been checked out by Dr. Lam and debriefed and put on the kind of clothes that make Cam feel human again, they meet in the parking deck. There are a couple dozen cars littering the structure at all times, strange when Cam thinks about how solitary the mountain looks driving up to it.

Cam drives them to his favorite little dive bar. It's not the one the officers frequent. It's further out, with a smaller beer selection, a juke box that doesn't work half the time, and the best damn chili cheese fries Cam has ever had.

Sheppard gets a plate of wings, and doesn't take Cam's warning about how spicy the sauce is at heart. It's almost worth it to see the sudden widening of his eyes when he takes a big bite. He grabs a beer – Cam's beer – and gulps it back. Afterward, looking at the bottle, he realizes what he's done. "Oops?"

Cam is leaning against his barstool grinning. "No problem. Might as well finish it now."

Sheppard gets him another beer. He goes back to his wings, more cautious.

"Good, though, right?" Cam asks, nodding to the plate.

Sheppard looks up at him and nods. The sauce is smeared across his mouth and Cam tries not to notice.

Three hours later, Sheppard's drunk.

Maybe Cam is too.

They're walking outside, shoulders bumping every few seconds. They don't talk much, random observations about things in front of them. They don't talk about the mission, about stargates or alien worlds or teammates past and present.

"Back to my place?" Cam asks, looking at Sheppard.

"You got beer?"

Yeah, Sheppard knows the important questions to ask.

 

V.

They're making out.

This really isn't how Cam pictured the evening going, but he's not complaining. Sheppard's mouth is hot and firm on his and Sheppard's not afraid to let his hands wander. He fools around like a guy, grabbing and groping.

"Been a while," Cam mutters.

"That a yes or a no?" Sheppard says. Straight to the point, kneecapping all the bullshit and posturing. That shouldn't turn Cam on as much as it does. Maybe he really has spent too much time around the politicians and the wannabes.

Still, he's not sure how to answers, so what comes out of his mouth is, "Didn't know you'd asked a question."

Sheppard puts his hand between Cam's legs, curls his fingers around the length of Cam's dick through his jeans. "I'm asking."

"Yeah," Cam breathes, and he doesn't really mean it as a response to the non-question so much as general encouragement because what Sheppard's doing feels really damn good, but Sheppard takes it as an answer and that's okay.

 

VI.

There's a note taped to his desk the next morning.

Mitchell- lunch? noon. -JS

It isn't hard to decipher, and leaves Cam feeling weirdly buoyant.

He removes the note and stares at it for a few more seconds before he crumples it up. He sinks it into he trash can in one shot, but the feeling sticks with him for the next couple of hours. It sticks with him until he walks into the commissary and spots Sheppard already in line with a tray in his hands, surveying the menu options for the day.

"No grabbing the last slice of pie," Cam says, and he'd swear if it had been anyone else they'd have jumped but Sheppard just twitched slightly and turned his head a little more quickly than perhaps normal.

But then he smiles and Cam smiles back and it's definitely not a moment, because guys don't have moments like that, but it's something.

Seated across the table from each other, they focus more on food than they do on conversation until the food is gone. Cam keeps stealing looks and he thinks he's being subtle but maybe not because eventually Sheppard just says, "What? Got something on my face?"

No, but he probably has a bruise on his shoulder from Cam's teeth, a kiss turned more intense when he started to come.

He's not sure what the memory does to his expression, but Sheppard's mouth curls into a wicked grin. "Oh."

Cam looks down, slightly embarrassed, but only slightly - because Sheppard didn't seem to be brushing this one under the rug. Cam feels a pressure against his leg that can't be anything but Sheppard's knee. He looks up again. "Uh huh."

"So, tonight?" Sheppard asks.

Cam tries not to grin too obviously. "Oh yeah. Tonight."

 

VII.

The thing about Sheppard is, Cam knows he's only passing through. Sheppard's made it clear time and again that he's not interested in being a desk jockey. He wants Atlantis – and he wants Atlantis back where it belongs. He's a champion for a cause that few else are fighting, because it's in the best interest of everyone else to have Atlantis on Earth.

The night that Sheppard tells Cam about his plans for Atlantis – well, it's the most, and certainly most passionate, that Cam has ever heard him speak. His voice rises and carries and suddenly Cam can see exactly what about him that evokes people to follow him.

It's hot as hell, and when Sheppard has said his piece Cam helps him channel that frustration into something else, something naked and sweaty and grappling. They're good at this – the sex – but the surprise is, they're good at other stuff, too. They co-exist well.

Cam likes it. He hadn't realized how much he missed sharing space with someone. He comes back from a mission dead tired and needing to unwind and Sheppard's there. For a drink, conversation while a game is on, for human contact and connection. He likes it, and Sheppard's only passing through, and he's setting himself up for a fall but somehow that doesn't make much of a difference.

 

VIII.

"I was married once," Sheppard says. "What about you?"

"Married? Nah," Cam shrugs.

"Anywhere close to it?"

Cam thinks about kissing a pretty blonde on a nice spring day, and the girl he'd lived with for six months over a decade ago. The last time he thought he'd been in love with someone who slipped through his fingers like quicksilver. The feeling had mellowed and now he's not really sure how to put a name through it, he only knows that this feels different from that. He shakes his head. "Not really."

"Ah," Sheppard nods, knowingly. "One man wolfpack"

"Something like that." Cam laughed. They watched that movie together just the week before, halfway to drunk and finding everything hilarious. "So you were married?"

Sheppard nods. "Didn't work. Only lasted a couple of years."

"Hey, you had a better stretch than I ever did," Cam says.

Sheppard gives him a shrewd look. "Thing is, I can't really figure out why."

"Why…?" Cam isn't following.

"Why you're not married with two kids and a white picket fence." Sheppard says. "That's what I had you pegged for, first time I saw you. You just look like you'd fit it. That life."

Cam gives a helpless shrug. Now he's really not sure where this conversation is going.

 

IX.

Sheppard is being transferred back to Atlantis.

Cam knows it before he does. Cam knows because Cam's the one that pushed the paperwork through, badgered Landry and called in favors from Sam Carter to put in a good word. The SGC had grand plans for John Sheppard but John Sheppard has even more grand plans for himself. He misses the city and it's getting worse, not better. He talks about it more now than before, talks about Teyla and Ronan and Rodney shows up from R&D at least once a month and they disappear for hours together.

He knows the morning Landry tells Sheppard of the new assignment, because Sheppard shows up in his office. It is half past ten and Sheppard just stands there looking bewildered. He steps into the office and shuts the door behind him, holding up a folder. Cam doesn't have to guess what's inside it. "You did this?"

Cam shrugs. He still feels uneasy. He did this for Sheppard, but it's not something he's happy about and he's not sure how much of that he can mask. "It wasn't just me."

"But you had something to do with it."

"Yeah," Cam admits.

Sheppard crosses the room in a few steps, grabs Cam's arm and pulls him back. The chair rolls and Cam twists and then Sheppard's kissing him, hand is in his hair and his tongue is hot in Cam's mouth. He pulls back just long enough to murmur, "You did this," and then they're kissing again.

 

X.

Cam doesn't hear from Sheppard for a few weeks, and that's a disappointment, but not entirely unexpected. He's back to spending most of his time on base, back to logging more hours than he needs at the gym and the firing range, sparring for fun. He volunteers SG-1 for missions that his team would probably crucify him for getting them involved in, if they weren't so damned perfect and obedient. He misses the days when he didn't so much lead as just watch his team lead itself and try to rein them in when needed.

He does whatever it takes to keep himself from sitting at home staring at the television. He's not pining. It was never like that. They never laid down those kinds of lines for whatever it was they had. No promises, just a steady understanding and a warm body to turn to.

That's probably why he's surprised to walk into his office one morning and see Sheppard sitting in his chair. He stops dead still in the doorway and tries to parse out the situation.

"Don't look so surprised." Sheppard just grins, of course. "Atlantis isn't that far away now, remember?"

"I didn't think-" Cam starts to say, and stops before he can let too much out.

Sheppard just keeps smiling. "Well, now you can start to think."


End file.
